What ever became of Wilcox County, Alabama's 'petrified Indian heart'?

Historical marker in Wilcox County's Prairie community.

I was looking through some old newspapers the other day and ran across an unusual news item that involved a strange Indian relic with ties to Wilcox County.

In the April 13, 1898 edition of The Progressive Era, it was reported that Mr. J.G. Hart showed the newspaper’s editor what Hart called a “petrified Indian heart.” The newspaper reported that this object was in the “exact shape of a heart” and that Hart said it “came out of an Indian mound in the prairies.”

This was the first time that I’d ever heard of a petrified Indian heart, so I dug a little deeper into the subject. By definition, petrification is the process by which organic matter exposed to minerals over a long period is turned into a stony substance. This process, which turns organic material into fossils, takes a long time, and many in the reading audience have no doubt seen pieces of petrified wood.

I reached out to friends in the Alabama Archaeological Society to see what they thought about Hart’s petrified Indian heart. According to Steven Meredith, a senior archaeologist with Cedars Consulting, it is a “good bet that this was an iron-cemented concretion” and not an actual fossilized organ from a human body. “Then, as even now, unusual objects were assigned to a mystical, almost magical past that was, in the collective mind of the time, the realm of The Others, a place occupied in our part of the world by Indians.”

Friends in the Rebel State Archaeological Society of Alabama agreed. Some said that the idea of a petrified human heart is farfetched because environmental conditions in the United States wouldn’t likely support petrified human remains. However, it’s not entirely out of the realm of possibility because in 2016 scientists found the perfectly preserved heart of a fish that was between 113 and 119 million years old.

One is left to wonder where Hart found the object or how it came to be in his possession. The newspaper said it came out of an Indian mound in “the prairies,” which could mean it came from the northwestern part of Wilcox County. Here you will find the well-known Prairie community and Prairie Mission School, off State Highway 28. This is just down the road from Prairie Bluff and the Alabama River.

I believe that the J.G. Hart mentioned in the newspaper to be the John G. Hart who died in Camden on April 21, 1934. Born in Camden on April 1, 1868, Hart was a carpenter and apparently had a gift for music. According to his obituary, Hart “was gifted with musical talent and splendid voice and at one time was organist of the Methodist church, having studied under Prof. Henri Herz Andrews. By his kind, friendly manner, he had won many friends, who will regret to learn of his death.”

Hart, who is buried in the Camden Cemetery, was married to the former Bessie Fell, who preceded him in death, leaving him a widower. As best that I can tell, they didn’t have any children. This begs the question: What became of Hart’s petrified Indian heart and where is it today?

In the end, please let me hear from you if you have any additional information about Hart and his petrified Indian heart. Perhaps someone in the reading audience has it in their possession and would be interested in having it properly examined and identified. If so, I can put you in touch with knowledgeable, trustworthy experts who can shed light on the true nature of this old relic.